One dead in white supremacist terrorist attack in Charlottesville: Today in Tweets

What looked last night like farce has turned to tragedy: A speeding car crashed into a crowd of counterprotesters at the so-called #UniteTheRight neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville today, killing one woman and leaving many injured. Video of the incident makes pretty clear that this was an intentional act. The word for this is terrorism.

Details are still scarce, including the identity of the driver, who has apparently been taken into custody. Two police monitoring the protests died in a helicopter crash as well, the cause of which is still unknown.

Here are some tweets that may help to make sense of what has happened and what is happening in Charlottesville. I have put video of the car attack itself behind a content warning at the end of the post.

So the question for us white people is: is there some way for us to speak to other white people who have at least a semblance of an open mind to try to accomplish the same sort of thing that happened with gay rights. I spend a lot of time on other blogs arguing with people who say that Liberals need to get away from “identity politics” (as if white identity was not identity politics) and multiculturalism, but I’m not sure it has any effect. I mean, does it do any good to argue with someone who claims that the primary purpose of BLM is to murder police?

At this point… I don’t think so. The right-wing parties of the world have gradually grown so extreme over the past 40 years that the reachable people long abandoned them. Whoever’s left are the ones willing to elect a Donald Trump or a Marine Le Pen.

I will say this, however: the crowd opposed to “identity politics” tend to be those that don’t like being confronted with politics in places they think are divorced entirely from it. Think your Gamergater who got caught up in it because they thought feminism was “ruining” video games. What they don’t understand is that politics is everywhere and your every choice is a manifestation of your personal politics. Try getting them to understand this point. Once you have a sense of where their empathy goes, you’ll know if they’re salvagable or not. But as time goes on and more incidents like this happen… it just makes it harder to remain detached, and that’s part of what is fuelling the backlash.

So the question for us white people is: is there some way for us to speak to other white people who have at least a semblance of an open mind to try to accomplish the same sort of thing that happened with gay rights. I spend a lot of time on other blogs arguing with people who say that Liberals need to get away from “identity politics” (as if white identity was not identity politics) and multiculturalism, but I’m not sure it has any effect. I mean, does it do any good to argue with someone who claims that the primary purpose of BLM is to murder police?

At this point… I don’t think so. The right-wing parties of the world have gradually grown so extreme over the past 40 years that the reachable people long abandoned them. Whoever’s left are the ones willing to elect a Donald Trump or a Marine Le Pen.

I will say this, however: the crowd opposed to “identity politics” tend to be those that don’t like being confronted with politics in places they think are divorced entirely from it. Think your Gamergater who got caught up in it because they thought feminism was “ruining” video games. What they don’t understand is that politics is everywhere and your every choice is a manifestation of your personal politics. Try getting them to understand this point. Once you have a sense of where their empathy goes, you’ll know if they’re salvagable or not. But as time goes on and more incidents like this happen… it just makes it harder to remain detached, and that’s part of what is fuelling the backlash.

I wrote something but the site ate it so I’ll try again….

I always try to look at the “silver lining” on everything and I refuse to succumb to fear and alarm.

The good thing is that the backlash against the backlashers is bigger (at least in The West). There are more decent people than bigots.

Most of the U.S.A’s reactionaries are older people and they’re slowing leaving this mortal plane of existence. The younger ones are a tiny but loud minority. Most of the youngsters in America reject bigotry and wingnuttery. If anything, the changing demographics will help put the kibosh on the wingnuttery.

Heard about this today and still trying to gather thoughts, but it’s just so horrible, I’m not sure what to say. I feared something like this but didn’t really expect this method. RIP Heather Hayer. I hope those injured are doing as well as can be expected. Stay safe, all.

As for who is reachable, I think the question is what ordinary Republicans think of these Nazi-militias. I get the impression at least some don’t like what they perceive as public disorder anyway (which this rally of course was far more than), they think of themselves as conservative. Online may well distort the picture, the extremists spend a lot of time online. Those of you in the US maybe stand a better chance of reaching anyone, you can do it face to face (as long as safe!).

Gawd. : / That’s so depressing that they still support him. I don’t doubt they’re racist, but explicit Nazis, though? Isn’t there at least some Republican buy-in to the idea of the heroic US saving the day against the Nazis in WWII?

Mind, I never know how Republicans manage with their cognitive dissonance anyway, wouldn’t totally surprise me if some think that while still being Nazis.

@Leo
Well, many of them aren’t Nazis as such. Organised white supremacy in the U.S is much older than Nazism. But neo Confederates are no better, and indeed no different in any meaningful sense, nor are garden-variety white supremacists whose only allegiance is to the U.S. flag. And yes, all Republicans, every single one, falls into one of those three categories. Many Democrats fall in the third camp as well.

@Dalillama
Thanks for the explanation. I can see that about them not being any better. I’m just wondering/hoping if they might end up fighting among themselves – maybe some of the garden-variety white supremacists types won’t like what happened in Cville, either? Whether they’ll raise any objections, though… : /

I always try to look at the “silver lining” on everything and I refuse to succumb to fear and alarm.

The good thing is that the backlash against the backlashers is bigger (at least in The West). There are more decent people than bigots.

Most of the U.S.A’s reactionaries are older people and they’re slowing leaving this mortal plane of existence. The younger ones are a tiny but loud minority. Most of the youngsters in America reject bigotry and wingnuttery. If anything, the changing demographics will help put the kibosh on the wingnuttery.

I wish I could be as confident in demography, but we are often a product of our environment. The faces I see at Charlotteville look like those who are sheltered, those whose families have not been visited by hardship. And they are young; that guy who is now lamenting his viral status is 20 years old.

For the most part, young people who live in diverse environments have black friends and Latino friends and gay friends and trans friends. These are the ones for whom the GOP is entirely a lost cause, because they’re hurting those that they care about. Gated-community dwellers and rural whites, those who gave in to white flight decades past, those are the ones that are more susceptible to this kind of white nationalist rhetoric.

The more people live in cities, I think that will expose people to a broader range of cultures. Granted, it will also come with more strain on infrastructure and wages are still stagnant, but it does have that silver lining.

Not everyone who still supports Trump is a nazi, that’s true. BUT they are supporting a petty, lying, corrupt would-be dictator. They are basically extensions of him, and so they are functionally indistinguishable from him. You don’t have to be a fascist to help fascism.

Trump was very explicit and open about his racism and xenophobia. Plenty of his voters may not come out and call themselves Nazis or white nationalists. But that’s what they are. If they were opposed to white supremacy, they wouldn’t have voted for him. I don’t know what else to call someone who still approves of Trump even after he failed to condemn white nationalists. What would you call them?

If people don’t want to be called a Nazi or a white supremacist, they can quit supporting Trump. That’s that. It’s their choice to be likened to Nazis at this point.

We Hunted the Mammoth tracks and mocks the white male rage underlying the rise of Trump and Trumpism. This blog is NOT a safe space; given the subject matter -- misogyny and hate -- there's really no way it could be.